This invention relates to postage meters and in particular to accounting for postage charges applied to mail items.
Known postage meters operating in a so-called pre-payment mode include a descending register to store a value of credit available for use in franking operations. As each mail item is franked with a printed postage impression, the value of credit registered in the descending register is decremented by an amount equal to the postage charge for the mail item. Periodically the credit can be replenished in a recrediting operation in which the postal authority carries out an exchange of data with registers of the postage meter and increments the descending register by an amount equal to the value of credit purchased by a user of the postage meter.